Today’s edition of quick hits:
* WHO: “More than 100,000 coronavirus cases have been reported to the World Health Organization in the last 24 hours, ‘the most in a single day since the outbreak began,’ Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a news conference Wednesday.”
* This was largely expected: “The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday blocked a House committee from receiving grand jury material gathered by Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigators, issuing a stay while a legal dispute over the records is on appeal.”
* CDC: “Restaurants and bars should consider installing sneeze guards at their registers. Mass transit workers should close every other row of seats on their buses. Students should eat lunch in their classrooms instead of congregating in a cafeteria. These are among the social distancing measures that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed in a document it quietly released on its website this week.”
* Keep on eye on this one: “States are expected to ask the federal government to repay them at least an estimated $45 billion spent fighting the coronavirus, with President Trump likely to decide whether their costs will be covered in full.”
* In related news: “It sounded like a great deal: The White House coronavirus task force would buy a defense company’s new cleaning machines to allow critical protective masks to be reused up to 20 times. And at $60 million for 60 machines on April 3, the price was right. But over just a few days, the potential cost to taxpayers exploded to $413 million, according to notes of a coronavirus task force meeting obtained by NBC News…. Even worse, scientists and nurses say the recycled masks treated by these machines begin to degrade after two or three treatments, not 20.”
* Hmm: “The Justice Department’s highest-profile coronavirus prosecutions are being handled by an office poised for leadership changes, two people familiar with the cases told POLITICO. Investigations of lawmakers for potentially illegal insider trading based on government briefings on the pandemic are being run by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, in conjunction with the Public Integrity Section at Main Justice, as the department’s headquarters is known.”
* Houses of worship: “Churches in states at the forefront of reopening efforts are closing their doors for a second time. Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle in Ringgold, Ga., less than 20 miles away from Chattanooga, Tenn., and Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Houston have indefinitely suspended services after members and leaders tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after reopening.” * Related news: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked a cluster of coronavirus cases in rural Arkansas back to a church pastor and his wife, indicating that faith-based organizations and events could be sources of Covid-19 transmission, according to a new study published Tuesday.” * There has to be a larger story here, right? “The head of NASA’s human spaceflight office has resigned just one week before the agency plans to launch astronauts from American soil for the first time in nearly a decade, setting off alarm in Congress about how the turmoil might disrupt the historic mission.” See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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